The NCAA Committee on Infractions announced Friday it could not find North Carolina violated NCAA rules involving years-long academic scandal involving athletes across multiple sports.

"The panel concluded that while student-athletes and athletics programs may have benefitted from utilizing the courses, the general student body also benefitted," a release from the NCAA said. "Based on both the information available in the record and North Carolina’s support of the courses that were offered as not violating its policies, the panel could not conclude that the university failed to monitor or lacked control over its athletics program."

The university faced five Level I charges from the NCAA, including lack of institutional control, in a case that grew as an offshoot of a probe launched in 2010 into the football program.

The academic fraud allegations involved classes taken by athletes in the African and Afro-American studies department between 2002 and 2011 that helped many retain their eligibility. The irregularities are focused on independent study-style courses misidentified as lecture classes that didn’t meet and required a research paper or two while featuring significant athlete enrollments.

In a 2014 investigation, former U.S. Justice Department official Kenneth Wainstein estimated more than 3,100 students were affected between 1993 and 2011, with athletes across numerous sports making up roughly half the enrollments.

The NCAA had said UNC used those courses to help keep athletes eligible.

In its response to the case, North Carolina challenged the most serious and potentially damaging allegation, arguing that "inadequate academic oversight unrelated to the Department of Athletics" didn't constitute an issue within the NCAA's jurisdiction.

The Committee on Infractions found only two violations out of five charges - a failure-to-cooperate charge against two people tied to the problem courses in the formerly named African and Afro-American Studies department.

The lone penalty issued was a five-year show cause penalty for former professor Julius Nyang'Oro, who was chairman of the department

Nyang'Oro resigned in 2011 during an investigation into grades awarded to athletes for no-show classes that required very little work.

The other person, retired administrator Deborah Crowder, initially refused interviews but reconsidered and interviewed with NCAA investigators in May as well as attended the school’s hearing with the panel in August. She was not punished, but the NCAA says it is making note of her initial lack of cooperation.

“While student-athletes likely benefited from the so-called ‘paper courses’ offered by North Carolina, the information available in the record did not establish that the courses were solely created, offered and maintained as an orchestrated effort to benefit student-athletes,” said Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey, the panel’s chief hearing officer.